North Korea launched 23 short-range ballistic missiles on Wednesday (Nov. 2), a record-breaking fusillade that spurred a response from its neighbor to the south.
The barrage started on Wednesday morning North Korean time (Tuesday night U.S. EDT) with the launch of 4 missiles from a northern province westward towards the Yellow Sea, NBC News reported (opens in new tab), citing officers with the South Korean navy. Shortly thereafter, North Korea launched three extra missiles eastward from Wonsan, a city on the nation’s east coast.
A kind of three landed south of the sea-border buffer zone between North and South Korea — one thing that hadn’t occurred because the Korean peninsula was divided between the 2 nations in 1948, NBC Information reported.
Associated: North Korea’s rocket and missile program (photos)
South Korea considered this as a critical provocation and didn’t take it mendacity down.
“In response, South Korean F-15K and KF-16 fighter jets fired three precision-guided air-to-surface missiles at a goal on the north aspect of the buffer zone of the ocean border the identical distance away because the North Korean missile,” NBC Information wrote.
The barrage went on, with North Korea in the end sending almost two dozen missiles skyward over the course of the day — greater than it ever had earlier than. None precipitated any reported casualties or critical harm to infrastructure.
The launches continued a busy yr of saber-rattling for North Korea, a nuclear-armed nation whose autocratic chief, Kim Jong-un, has a historical past of constructing florid threats against the United States and its allies, together with South Korea and Japan.
North Korea has now launched greater than 50 missiles in 2022, NBC Information famous. Not all of them have been short-range automobiles, both. In March, for instance, the nation tested an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), sending the car on a 71-minute flight that reached a peak altitude of about 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) and ended with a splashdown in Japanese waters.
Wednesday’s launches could have been a response, not less than partly, to a set of beforehand deliberate U.S.-South Korean navy workouts. The massive-scale joint workouts, often called “Vigilant Storm,” started on Monday (Oct. 31), CNN reported (opens in new tab).
North Korea made the information on Wednesday for a unique purpose as nicely: The White Home accused the nation of secretly sending artillery shells to Russia to be used throughout its ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. officers suppose that North Korea is “attempting to make it seem as if they’re being despatched to nations within the Center East or North Africa,” U.S. Nationwide Safety Council spokesman John Kirby stated on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press (opens in new tab).
Mike Wall is the writer of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a ebook concerning the seek for alien life. Observe him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or on Facebook (opens in new tab).
